Privacy Policy

As contributors to the Dolphin Emulator project, we always try our best to keep our users' best interests in mind. Dolphin and some of its associated services (for example, this website) do sometimes collect information about our users and their activities. This page will attempt to explain in what situations we collect data, how we process it, and how do we keep it secure if needed.

Emulation Software

Dolphin collects data and transmits it to the internet for several different use cases:

If you are using Dolphin to emulate software which uses internet connectivity, Dolphin will collect and transmit data as instructed to by the game or software you are attempting to run. For example, if you attempt to play Mario Kart Wii online, Dolphin will be collecting your inputs and sending them to Nintendo's game servers for processing. The scope of the data being sent in this situation should be exclusively limited to activity happening inside the emulator and should not include any of your computer's or system's information. You can opt-out of this processing by not using online features within the emulator.

Some of the emulator features require the use of third-party services. These features are optional and you can either decide to not use them or disable them as you wish:

Downloading Gecko cheat codes from Dolphin uses the WiiRD Code Database service. Using this feature will share with WiiRD your network's IP address as well as the gameid of the game you wish to download codes for. You can opt-out of this sharing by not using the Gecko codes download feature.

Downloading game box covers from Dolphin uses the GameTDB service. Using this feature will share with GameTDB your network's IP address as well as the gameid of all games in your Dolphin library. Please refer to GameTDB's Privacy Policy for details on how this information is processed. You can opt-out of this sharing by not using the GameTDB covers download feature.

By default, if you use the Discord application on the same computer as Dolphin, the game you are currently playing will be shared with Discord. This is used to provide automatic presence status update as well as the NetPlay Join Party feature. Please refer to Discord's Privacy Policy for details on how this information is processed. You can opt-out of this sharing by disabling the Discord Rich Presence feature in Dolphin's settings.

Dolphin's Analytics Reporting feature shares information with the Dolphin development team. This feature is strictly opt-in and anonymous. The next section of this document will cover Dolphin's analytics in more details.

Analytics Reporting

The first time you launch Dolphin, you are asked whether you consent to sharing anonymous data about your usage of Dolphin to help us improve the software. This section describes the type of information collected through our analytics reporting.

Anonymity

We try our best to not collect information that can identify a Dolphin user from their reported analytics. Analytics reports are tied to a random analytics ID which is generated at initial Dolphin setup time. You can generate a new analytics ID through Dolphin's settings.

Due to how the internet works, Dolphin also shares your IP address with Dolphin's analytics service when submitting a report. We do not link this IP address with any other information from the report. The IP address is kept in logs for up to 7 days for anti-abuse purposes.

Collected Data

Dolphin version

Hardware information (CPU and GPU models)

Operating System information (type, version)

Dolphin configuration settings

Game currently being played

Emulation speed and performance

Data Sharing

High level aggregated data generated from Dolphin's analytics may be shared publicly with anyone. This includes for example usage trends for Dolphin as a whole, or reported performance increases between two Dolphin versions.

Raw unaggregated data is shared on a need-to-know basis within the Dolphin development team and infrastructure maintenance team.

Retention

Normal usage data is kept for up to 365 days. Performance samples are kept for up to 90 days.

Opt out

If you have opted-in to this reporting but have changed your mind, you can disable analytics reporting in Dolphin's settings window.

*.dolphin-emu.org Websites

Dolphin's websites feature ads to help us pay our bills (build and testing infrastructure, domain name, hosting, backups, etc.). These ads are not targeted to any single users, and the providers of this advertisement are not collecting any information about your usage patterns on our websites.

We use Google Analytics to help us improve our website and figure out what our users want to see more of. We do not use any analytics feature which would allow tracking or identifying any single user.

We use cookies. Who doesn't? Specifically, we use them for login sessions as well as language preferences.

We do not store IP addresses or any other identifying information in our logs. We do keep IP addresses for an indefinite amount of time for anti-abuse purpose on our forums and Wiki (spam prevention, ban evasion prevention).